Family Leave
Without access to paid leave, few can afford time off to care for family. Federal family leave laws guarantee only unpaid time off, and nearly half of all workers don’t even qualify for that, risking the health of children and aging parents. To tackl…
Early Learning
Early childhood educators care for our kids at poverty-level wages. High-quality teachers transform childcare into an environment where early learning blossoms, boosting a child’s health, improving social cooperation and individual initiative, and im…
Health Care
Initiative 773 expanded public health care options for thousands of working families. In the late 1980’s, Washington State took a major step forward to improve health care coverage by creating the Basic Health Plan (BHP), which provided basic health…
Minimum Wage
Washington’ minimum wage had become a political hot potato. Before 1998, the minimum wage would languish for years between hard-fought campaigns for increases. People toiling at some of our state’s hardest jobs saw inflation gobble up more of their p…
Paid Sick Days
No one should have to choose between working sick and losing a day’s pay – or their job. Washington state has helped lead the way on paid sick leave policy nationally, from introducing one of the very first bills to establish minimum paid leave stand…
Retirement Security
Collapsing pensions and plans to privatize Social Security threatened vulnerable seniors and families. In the 1990’s, a growing number of employers defaulted on their pension plans, and political moves to privatize Social Security gained momentum. Fo…
Tax Reform
Washington’s tax system: unbalanced, out-of-date and overdue for reform. EOI’s analysis and public education efforts have supported new funding to expand the Basic Health Plan for low-income working adults, boost educational achievement, and repair o…
Worker Advancement
Thousands of people were pushed off welfare rolls with no hope of finding a job. As reforms to federal welfare programs unfolded in the late ‘90’s, those with the greatest barriers to employment faced losing financial support, without the skills and…
